Sunday, February 22, 2015

Week Six Prompt: Tournament of Dastardly Devilish Villains of Horror

The star of any good horror book is the antagonist. As a method to promote the horror collection, we can highlight sixteen great villains from horror (e.g. Pennywise the Clown, Dracula, Patrick Bateman) in a tournament to find the greatest horror villain from literature. With an eye-catching display near the fiction collection, this tournament would provide integrated readers advisory for those looking a good horror novel. By design, the tournament is also incites active participation by patrons who love a certain novel (i.e. Stephen King-type horror vs. classic horror). By the end, depending on the number of votes on the tournament, the library could host a small party to celebrate the joys (ha) of horror literature and to announce the winning antagonist.

9 comments:

  1. LOVE it! I think Half Price books did something similar (but with movie villains as well). I would love to see Randall Flagg win. Great idea!

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  2. LOVE it! I think Half Price books did something similar (but with movie villains as well). I would love to see Randall Flagg win. Great idea!

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  3. This is an awesome idea. It is also a great way to incorporate men (or women who love sports), since it reminds them of basketball brackets. I have not seen anything like this before and I think it is an interesting concept. I would like to see it play out as a real display, it would be different to see. Good job!

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  4. This is AWESOME!!

    I thought about doing something like this during March Madness - like, finding our library's favorite book using a bracket! I envisioned that, like your suggestion, patrons would vote and we'd narrow down the bracket every few days to reflect that. Has anyone actually done something like this? Are people motivated to vote to push their favorite to the top? I'd love to hear about experiences with this.

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    1. I did something similar last year with the teens to find out their favorite YA book of all-time (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). This year, we are doing it with movies.

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    2. This idea reminded me of our March Madness. We are doing a bracket for fiction and a bracket for nonfiction this year, using a mix of the most checked out/requested books and award winning books. People love it - if a favorite is on there, they want to see them win! Plus, we draw for a prize from the entries at the end.

      I like the idea of doing it for specific characters sometime. There are so many possibilities. I'm thinking Literary Leading Men around Valentine's Day sometime. I'm betting you could get some heavy voting if you had Ranger vs. Morelli from the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich.

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  5. I really love the interactive nature of this display! Voting for a favorite villain should really appeal to young adults. And, I agree with Jenny that this idea could be used in so many different scenarios. Ranger vs. Morelli could also have been Edward vs. Jacob, or Gale vs. Peeta, or as a DVD promotion, the favorite Dr. Who. Readers (and watchers) are very enthusiastic about their favorites characters.

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  6. I like the bracket, even though just seeing the name Pennywise makes me shiver!

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  7. I like the bracket, even though just seeing the name Pennywise makes me shiver!

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